bookshelf

THE CABIN ON SOUDER HILL

Name: THE CABIN ON SOUDER HILL
Author: Lonnie Busch
ISBN: 978-1-982585-45-7

by Lonnie Busch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2020

More questions than answers. Lots more.

bookshelf

An Atlanta woman who reports her husband missing from the cabin they’re sharing in the Georgia woods doesn’t realize that his disappearance will rapidly become the most normal-seeming event in her life.

Michelle Stage has only recently forgiven her husband, Cliff, a used-car dealer, for his adultery. When he leaves their isolated cabin to track down the source of a mysterious light and then doesn't return, Sheriff Louden Fisk assures her that no one else has lived anywhere close by ever since the vanishing of realtor Pink Souder, who built the cabin, and his mother, Wiccan priestess Mattie Souder, years ago. Before Michelle even has time to shift from worrying to grieving, Cliff turns up minus a finger he claims to have lost in the car crash that claimed their teenage daughter, Cassie, who Michelle just knows isn’t dead. But since Fisk and Deputy Elmer Bogan claim that Michelle’s the one who was reported missing and that they’ve never met her before, she doesn’t really know what she knows. Under the circumstances, it’s logical, if not exactly reasonable, that soon after she steals a car and a gun from her older sister, Darcy, Michelle meets Pink Souder, and then his mother, who, during a visit to the hospital where Michelle’s been taken, miraculously identifies the Jane Doe who’s sharing a room with her, a woman who’s soon reported dead herself. Different readers will decide at different points that there’s never going to be a rational explanation for all the different realities that hover around the cabin on Souder Hill, but Busch keeps the mysterious atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife—not that that would have any lasting effect.

HOME IS WHERE THE BODIES ARE

by Jeneva Rose ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2024

Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.

bookshelf

Awards & Accolades

Likes

11

Our Verdict

GET IT

New York Times Bestseller

Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.

Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.

Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.

Pub Date: April 30, 2024

ISBN: 9798212182843

Page Count: 270

Publisher: Blackstone

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE COME HERE
by Jeneva Rose

- BOOK REVIEW
ONE OF US IS DEAD
by Jeneva Rose

bookshelf

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

bookshelf

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.